Lettre à M. Dacier, ... relative à l'alphabet des hiéroglyphes phonétiques

signs, the rules of their combinations through those signs that fulfill purely logical or grammatical functions, and to have thus laid the first foundations of what might be called the grammar and the dictionary of these two scripts used in the vast number of monuments. The interpretation of these monuments will cast much light on the general history of Egypt. Regarding the demotic script in particular, the precious Rosetta inscription was sufficient to recognize it as a whole. Scholarly criticism is indebted first to the insights of your illustrious colleague Mr. Silvestre de Sacy, and successively to those of the late Akerblad and Dr. Young, for the first accurate notions drawn from this monument. It is from this same inscription that I deduced the series of demotic signs which, taking on a syllabic-alphabetic value, expressed the proper names of persons foreign to Egypt within the ideographic idea-writing texts. This is also how the name of the Ptolemies was rediscovered both on this same inscription and on a papyrus manuscript recently brought from Egypt.

Therefore, to complete my work on the three types of Egyptian scripts, I only have left to produce my memoir on pure hieroglyphs. I dare to hope that my new efforts will also receive a favorable reception from your celebrated company, whose kindness has been such a precious encouragement to me.

But in the current state of Egyptian studies, when